Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle--but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London--just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off...
Castor has reluctantly returned to exorcism after the case of the Bonnington Archive ghost convinced him that he really can do some good with his abilities ('good', of course, being a relative term when dealing with the undead). But his friend, Rafi, is still possessed; the succubus, Ajulutsikael (Juliet to her friends), still technically has a contract on him; and he's still - let's not beat around the bush - dirt poor. Doing some consulting for the local constabulary helps pay the bills, but Castor needs a big, private job to really fill the hole in his overdraft. That's what he needs. What he gets, good fortune and Castor not being on speaking terms, is a seemingly insignificant 'missing ghost' case that inexorably drags himself and his loved ones into the middle of a horrific plot to raise one of Hell's fiercest demons. And when Satanists, sacrifice farms, stolen spirits and possessed churches all appear on the same police report, the name of Felix Castor can't be too far behind . . .
Before he died, Castor's fellow exorcist John Gittings made several calls asking for help and if Castor had answered them, John might still be alive. So when a smooth-talking lawyer comes out of nowhere to claim the remains, Castor owes it to John's unhappy ghost and even more unhappy widow to help out. If only life were that simple. A brutal murder in King's Cross bears all the hallmarks of an American serial killer supposedly forty years dead, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved. He's also fighting a legal battle over the body - if not the soul - of his possessed friend, Rafi, and can't shake the feeling that his three problems are related. With the help of the succubus Juliet, paranoid zombie data-fence Nicky Heath and a little judicious digging, Castor just might have a chance of fitting the pieces together before someone drops him down a lift shaft or rips his throat out. Or not. . .
In the fourth gripping book in the highly acclaimed series Publishers Weekly calls "every bit as good as the better-known Jim Butcher," old ghosts of different kinds come back to haunt Felix Names and faces he thought he'd left behind in Liverpool resurface in London, bringing Castor far more trouble than he'd anticipated. Childhood memories, family traumas, sins old and new, and a council estate that was meant to be a modern utopia until it turned into something like hellthese are just some of the sticks life uses to beat Felix Castor with as things go from bad to worse for London’s favorite freelance exorcist. See, Castor’s stepped over the line this time, and he knows he’ll have to pay; how much is the only question. Not the best of times, then, for an unwelcome confrontation with his holier-than-thou brother, Matthew, and just when he thinks things can't possibly get any worse, along comes Father Gwillam and the Anathemata. Oh joy.
The fifth dynamic outing for freelance London exorcist Felix Castor resolves a long-running arc, and finds Castor making a brutal choice They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but if you ask Castor he'll tell you there's quite a bit of arrogance and reckless stupidity lining the streets as well. He should know. There are only so many times you can play both sides against the middle and get away with it. Now, the inevitable moment of crisis has arrived and it’s left Castor with blood on his hands. Well, not his handsit’s always someone else who pays the bill: friends, acquaintances, and bystanders. So Castor drowns his guilt in cheap whiskey, while an innocent woman lies dead and her daughter comatose, his few remaining friends fear for their lives and there’s a demon loose on the streets. It's not just any demonthis one rides shotgun on his best friend’s soul and can’t be expelled without killing him. It seems that Felix Castor’s got some tough choices to make, because expel the demon he must or all Hell will break looseliterally.
"'London's exorcists! I have a reward for all of you, a job for one of you. Come to Brierley House, 20th April, 9.00am.' The newspaper ad is a baited hook and it smells like a three-day old corpse. But hey, it's a grand in hand just for turning up so Felix Castor goes in anyway, alongside the curdled cream of his dubious profession. And once he's in it's hard to get out again. Brierley House is the home of Russian oligarch Gavril Ustinov, now missing, his driven daughter Ksenia Ustinova and their staff of taciturn, sinister domestics. It also hosts an invisible force that attacks exorcists and negates their abilities--a force that seems to be centuries old. Ksenia wants Castor to locate her missing father, alive or dead. Castor wants to find out who set a trap for exorcists back in the late Middle Ages and what else they were up to. For a job this big he's got friends he can call on: zombie data-fence Nicky Heath, reformed succubus Juliet Salazar, jaded cop Gary Coldwood and Trudie Pax, the Anathemata's finest warrior. But the ghosts of Brierley are many, and they won't give up their secrets lightly..."--Jacket flap.